The Dead Apple Tree – Poem
You lie forlorn and all alone,
none near you to mourn your passing,
you are reduced to just skeletons,
all flesh denuded and gone,
deserted you are by one and all.
In the glory days of your youth,
you were a joy to behold,
in great splendour, verve and life,
your foliage was fresh and green,
abundant crimson blooms adorning you,
all branches laden with succulent fruits,
birds pecking at them in frenzied rush
I too stood enchanted and in bliss,
caressing the skin smooth fruits,
feeling their youthful, fullness,
in sheer joy, biting delicious flesh,
in mad eagerness, relishing
and ravaging on and on non-stop
till primordial hunger assuaged,
for days, weeks, months and more,
you were unselfish, generous to a fault
unreserved, a bounty seemed inexhaustible.
Now I gaze at your uncouth skeletons,
strewn ungainly everywhere,
soon you will rot and go,
disappear leaving no trace at all,
yet you are food for vermin and bugs,
sustaining chain of life eons to come.
An unending saga of birth and rebirth.
Why did you came out to be born,
from the bowels of earth and grew,
and bore fruits and withered,
to bare bones and then nothing,
like me who came by chance birth and,
will go like the millions preceded,
to where I know not, nor do care,
or worry, even for a while.
They say birth is an accident,
and only death the certainty,
nature is but natural selection,
and life, a dire constant struggle
for precarious existence; competing
for food and mate, warmth and shelter.
The earth one stands is but a speck
in endless space, among melting clouds,
and nature is a grim slaughter house,
of strife and of warring species,
one creature is food of the other,
for life and growth; a life of short duration,
for transient hold to pass on genes.
Man is not son of God, but of strife,
God has fled to the great unknown,
or to limitless space, will never return,
Heaven is a mere sky and space,
an empty void, earth a passing thing,
a transient foothold to hence to end,
leaving not a wrack behind, not even
a shadow left; everything a mirage,
moment’s precipitation of brief duration,
existence is of no consequence,
and a riddle of scant meaning,
random chances thrown up with
no purpose and destiny too.
Then why the bother and sulk,
it is no use to whine and cry.
So gaze at setting sun’s myriad hues,
in waves of sea and that come and go..
Behold the cherubic smile and joy,
spreading across faces of babes,
and cherish flowers of the spring.
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